Then, 1997 happened. And it was the strangest, most chaotic, most beautiful car crash of genres ever assembled on a single year-end chart.
If you look at the , you won’t find a theme. You’ll find a nervous breakdown. Here is the story of that year, told through five unlikely battles. Battle 1: The Diva vs. The Spaceman At #4 was "You Were Meant for Me" by Jewel —a folk singer with a $20 guitar and a poem about loneliness. At #3 was "Foolish Games" also by Jewel . Yes, she occupied two spots in the top five, beating everyone except Puff Daddy and Elton John. Her music was quiet, acoustic, and vulnerable. It was the sound of a girl in a coffee shop. top 20 songs 1997
Then there was the outlier. At #19 was —a mopey alt-rock ballad about suicide and regret. It was the anti-Puff. No samples. No swagger. Just a singer staring at his shoes. It had no business being next to Mase and Busta Rhymes, yet there it was. Battle 3: The Teenage Mutant Girl Power At #13 was "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls . The song that introduced "zig-a-zig-ah" to the English language. It was chaos: shouting, laughing, a rap break from Mel B, and a key change that felt like a sugar explosion. Record labels had spent years trying to manufacture girl groups. The Spice Girls accidentally did it while being openly rude to their managers. Then, 1997 happened
And at #18: —a murder ballad set to a cheerful acoustic guitar. She won Record of the Year at the Grammys. Then she disappeared. The Final Oddity The #5 song of 1997 was "Un-Break My Heart" by Toni Braxton . A power ballad so dramatic, so soaked in string sections and vocal runs, that it felt like a Broadway death scene. It was the last gasp of the "adult contemporary" diva before Britney Spears and boy bands bulldozed the landscape in 1998. The Moral of the Story If you listen to the Top 20 of 1997 today, you’ll notice something strange: there is no "sound of 1997." There’s a dead princess’s tribute next to a song about a meth-fueled threesome ("Semi-Charmed Life"). There’s a 12-year-old’s falsetto next to a grieving widow’s wail. There’s a kazoo. You’ll find a nervous breakdown
1997 was the last year the music industry had no idea what to do. So it just played everything. And somehow, that was glorious.